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I’m co-founder of the “space bots with lasers” company. Happy to answer any questions.
by thruflo22 8y ago
I’m co-founder of the “space bots with lasers” company.
Happy to answer any questions.
- noonespecial 8y agoCool. How does the laser kill the weed without risking starting a fire that might damage the crops?
- nkoren 8y agoNot the OP, but I'd just point out that all you should need to do is get the stem above the boiling point of water, which is well below the combustion point. What wavelength to use for that could be an interesting discussion. Makes me wonder whether you could use masers (microwave lasers) rather than optical lasers for a more efficient "heating the weed from the inside" effect.
- thruflo22 8y agoYup. There are peaks for energy transfer into water around 1 and 2 microns. So mid-IR.
- philipkglass 8y agoWhat precautions do you need to maintain eye safety around these bots? Can lasers kill weeds at the root, or do you just keep them "mowed" down to size with repeated applications?
- thruflo22 8y agoA skirt around the laser. There’s a few techniques. You can cut the meristem or you can heat the weed. If you can explode the physiology, they don’t grow back.
- nathan_long 8y agoHow efficient is laser weeding in time and energy? Like, can the robot move down the row as fast as a human weeding by hand? Can it carry a car battery and weed for an eight hour shift?
- Jedd 8y agoNot OP, but my take on this is efficiency and quality will be superior to a human (or will be very, very soon). Speed of movement / detection / destruction cycle isn't as important as cost per unit of land patrolled - these are things you can easily scale up if the price per device is low enough. Compare & contrast cost of humans.
- thruflo22 8y agoRight now the dwell time of the laser is slow like in the order of a second per weed. And there can be hundreds of weeds per square metre. So this needs to improve — and there’s lots of good ways to improve it. However, as the parent says, just leave a few bots out there and you easily compete with human operator cost.
- Jedd 8y agoRight, but one weed per second is already better than humans if for no other reason it's effectively continuous. And regular sweeps means you won't be seeing hundreds of weeds per square metre, certainly not once the primary crop's established. I recall the Bosch weed-stamper robot from a few years ago were pretty happy with ~ 2 weeks per second stomping rate.
- thruflo22 8y ago/me nods
- ph0rque 8y agoI've been thinking about a suite of robots on the residential level that could not only mow the grass and edge it, but also shovel snow, and perhaps eventually prune plants and pick the harvest. Would such a suite (or a base plus a suite of attachments) be practically affordable soon (say, cost less than $5k retail)? Edit: oops, I guess this should be directed at the small robot company, not the space bots with laser company.
- thruflo22 8y agoDepends what you mean by soon. And how multi tasking it is. But price erosion in the parts is dramatic and the software baseline is rising.
- stevenwoo 8y agoHow did you choose your hackernews username?
- terravion 8y agoWhat is the cost per acre / hectare of an intervention pass?
- thruflo22 8y agoSo many variables. But say £100 per hectare as a ballpark / rough order of magnitude. Note that the laser weeding in the article is researchware — not a commercial product.
- kevmo 8y agoWho are your investors?
- honestlyidk 8y agoonce again op doesnt deliver
- rytill 8y agoWhat kind of remote operation/visualization interfaces do you have for deployed systems? Does your company receive the alerts/visuals/notifications or do the farmers that buy from you receive these? Do you want farmers to eventually be able to operate the fleets you sell them, or would you prefer to sell the entire operation to farmers and manage the fleets yourself?
- thruflo22 8y agoFarmers may not fix them but they will operate the robots on farm. Already, tractor drivers are skilled operators of GPS controlled semi-autonomous machines. They’ll be the people who drop the robots off, review their task plans, stay in range of their heartbeat, swap implements and refill stuff.
- jelliclesfarm 8y agoHi! Would lasers work for Bermuda grass infestations? I am forced to till sections of my organic field to get rid of them and I would like to go no-till as far as possible.
- thruflo22 8y agoMaybe have a look at Rootwave — electric weed killing that’s used for invasive grass.